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Space Blimps
EccentricAnomaly writes: "JPL has a press release about an aerorover blimp
for exploring Saturn's moon Titan. There's also a group
that has been working on inflatable rovers for Mars and Titan.
And there's a group working on flying robots, or aerobots for space exploration. With a 2.5 to 3 hour round-trip light time
between Earth and Saturn, flying anything on Titan has got to be a little dicey."
Do you have any URLs to support this? I find it hard to believe that a few million gallons of fuel is more expensive than the resources needed to keep humans alive indefinitely in a sealed environment and send them supplies from Earth as you propose.
Perhaps wwe could plan some sort of self-returning mission: Take along equipment that can make fuel out of whatever you expect to find at the destination. Not an uncommon concept in sci-fi.
It's all nice and geeky and all that, but it would be better to go for depth of exploration than breadth- Know all there is to know about a small subset of the possibilities than try to get a little of everything.
:) )
Instead of trying to explore every planet in the solar system at once, we should be returning men to the moon, or heading out to Mars. The latter, while far more expensive and complex, would gain us far more knowledge than these probes ever would
(I would propose establishing a permanent presence on the Moon or Mars, but I'm trying to be at least slightly realistic
With a 2.5 to 3 hour round-trip light time between Earth and Saturn, flying anything on Titan has got to be a little dicey."
And I thought lag on my cable modem was bad.
I would assume some system would be incorporated to have it auto-navigate.
if(mountain) turn left;
Thin?
Titan's atmosphere is certainly not thin. It essentially consists of both short-chain and long-chain hydrocarbons - rather dense air!
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi
sure, the nasa budget's been cut back and all, but, if they can construct a 6.5 meter robotic inflatable sphere to invade.. er.. explore mars, don't you think they could do a little better than spraypainting a soccer ball black and photoshopping it into a martian landscape with a shuttle astronaut in front?
t mbl_fot.jpg
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/adv_tech/rovers/Rovr_art/
yeesh..
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
I have discovered through my work with TransOrbital Inc. on our lunar orbiter due for launch in December that putting an inflatable up is an administrative nightmare. You see, they get classed as deployabe, untethered ICBM decoys due to some short-sighted treaty wording. Daft, eh?
:v)
Vik
What we need is a good inflatable technology scientist. Paging Dr. Schlock...
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Jos Whedon, Buffy:TVS creator, has already pioneered using Zepplin technology over Neptune for an upcoming episode.
Kevin Fox
--
Kevin Fox
If I wanted to inflate something like a blimp in a vacuum, I'd only introduce enough gas to make it assume the shape I wanted (like the Echo satellites in the 1960's), and then add gas as necessary to maintain the shape when approaching the planet or moon in question.
BTW, the larger the surface area/mass ratio, the less the space blimp has to heat up upon entering an atmosphere. Not everything has to heat up like a Mercury capsule or a Space Shuttle.
Keith Henson[1] once figured out that a solar sail heading right for the center of the earth from an interplanetary trajectory would come to a very gentle stop, and actually float in the stratosphere on a warm-air bubble trapped under the sail.
-jcr
[1] Yes, *that* Keith Henson. www.freehenson.da.ru
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Maybe NASA's JPL could team with DoubleClick or something to sell ad space, and raise money for NASA or even a charity. Sure it sounds stupid at first but wouldn't you like to think of yourself to have been the first to have your banner floating in space with the possibility of E.T.'s seeing it
Want Root?
JP are and interesting crowd - basicly a small-scale amateur space program
http://users.aber.ac.uk/ajs99/Altairhtml/Altair.sh tml
and photos:
http://users.aber.ac.uk/ajs99/Altairhtml/presspics .shtml
I'm not connected with them, I just work down the road.
Doh! Wrong gas giant. Serves me right for typing all that straight from five-year-old memory.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
I once discussed something vaguely similar with a somewhat science-illiterate friend, and he expressed horror at the idea.
"Blimps?! On a GAS GIANT?" he gagged. "One spark and the whole damn planet would turn into a supernova! This would make the Hindenburg look like a firecracker! It's dangerous! Mankind's arrogance is going to destroy the universe... blah, blah... "
It took two hours to explaining to tell him why this would not happen (because of a lack of anything for the methane gas to combust WITH, like OXYGEN).
Some people...
Honorary Member of Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers
All the worlds are yours
Except Europa
Dont attempt to land in Europa
Explore them together, Explore them in peace..
David Bowman
Rapid Nirvana
I agree. There are bacteria that live right next to underwater lava flows, there are bacteria that love to munch sulfur -- ship a few canisters to Venus and wait a couple million years. It'd be ripe for a colony right up until the Sun explodes. Of course, if it is too hot on Venus, they could always try this trick with it.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
...is that, depite going to these pages and seeing the technology, I really feel in my gut that much of this is decades away. These agencies (NASA, JPL) seem so slow-moving. It seems crazy, but more and more I find I am pinning my dreams of space onto civilians like "Rocketguy" and Dennis Tito. It is frustrating to look at the new technologies and be so jaded about them, but what normal people are doing to get into space soon excites me in ways that NASA can't match.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
covering up their real interest in inflatables in space.
I can't say much more (NDA, you know), but think about normal, red blooded American men in space for 3 1/2 years on the round trip to Mars, and the cost to get one of these into orbit (at $10,000 a pound) for each astronaut.
Yes, inflatables are the answer.
Sir, we calculated the pressure in stones per square inch, not pounds! There goes another $4 million.
Elbereth Gilthoniel!
This article is not about space blimps. It is about extra-planetary blimps. The distinction, of course, is that an extra-planetary blimp is inflated on a remote planet, and used for exploration. A true space blimp would be inflated in space. This would, of course, cause massive pressure on the hull, and provide no levitation since there is no gravity to push against and no differential air pressure to provide a lifting force.
/. editors don't read the stories, if I were that kind of guy.
Space blimps do exist, however. The article just doesn't mention them.
This is the part of the post where I would whine about how the
We can't send a human being around the world in a balloon, what makes us think that we can send a helium filled balloon to Titan, and have it successfully circumnavigate that moon without any problems?
We can't even use those remote controlled balloons around the house without ripping it on a ceiling fan!
It won't work guys, do not waste time, and money on this thing. You won't be able to make it light enough, and strong enough for a foreign atmosphere. The propellers alone would have to be like 21 feet long to work in that thin of atmosphere!!!
Peace!!!
ShortedOut